It's the time of the year - 7th month ghost festival. There's a getai set up just opposite my condo, at the basketball court across the road. The people are assembled under a tentage that and right in front is a pile of burning incense. While I was doing violin practice, music suddenly started blaring through the very effective sound system. I couldn't close my window because that would mean drowning myself in sweat. The music was so loud and the drum rhythm was very upbeat, which occasionally resulted in Beethoven's Romance suddenly going strangely out of beat. I stopped practice once I hit my 1hr/day quota, without even bothering to overshoot so that I could polish some parts.

Good thing the singers aren't singing too out of tune and the instruments are tuned properly. It's so loud it practically sounds like there's a live concert in my house. I would probably find it more useful if they used traditional Chinese instruments so that I could maybe analyse the music and revise on Chinese music before the prelims. Now, how am I going to get to work with all that noise... It's almost literally 吵死人 (and those still alive).

How is allowing getai at a public basketball court, on a nice Friday night, smack in the middle of housing properties and supported with booming speakers supposed to uphold equality for all religions? In that case, churches can just start giving all the residents a gospel rally right at their doorstep, and Muslims can have their prayers there, etc. Mom says it's a religious exception. Religious exceptions just might as well equate to religious inequality.

I'm not trying to offend anybody who might not share the same point of view, so please, just take it as a chunk of (nonsensical) info which may shed light on another perspective.